Breaking the Word: The First Step To Mission

Sunday, October 22, 2023

The First Step To Mission

29th Sunday in Ordinary Time (A)

World Mission Sunday

Readings: Isaiah 45:1, 4-6; Psalm 95 (96):1, 3-5, 7-10; 1 Thessalonians 1:1-5; Matthew 22:15-21

Picture: By Justin Follis on Unsplash

My dear friends, can you complete this saying: behind every successful man, there is a…? According to one version, behind every successful man, there is a strong woman. But this may sound sexist. So some have revised it to say, beside every successful man… Others turn it into a joke, such as, behind every successful man, there is a… surprised mother-in-law. But, seriously, what are we really doing when we look behind someone’s success? Aren’t we engaging in an act of attribution? We attribute or give credit for what is seen in the foreground–a person’s success–to the possibly unseen work or influence of someone else, in the background. Attribution. Isn’t this what we find in our scriptures today?

In the first reading, the Persian king Cyrus has been very successful. He has conquered the mighty Babylonians, and then generously allowed the long-suffering Israelites to return from exile, and rebuild the Temple in Jerusalem. While some may consider this nothing more than a stroke of good luck, or simply the result of a change in geopolitics, in faith, the prophet attributes it to God. It is God who has called, anointed, and armed Cyrus to save the people.

In the second reading, St Paul congratulates the Christian community in Thessalonica for having successfully shown its faith in action, worked for love and persevered through hope in Jesus Christ. He then attributes their success to the power that God gave them, when Paul first brought them the Good News. Even more, Paul is moved to render praise and thanks to God. We always… thank God for you all, he says.

Faith empowering attribution, which then motivates praise and thanksgiving. Isn’t this what we find in the psalm too? What does it mean to give the Lord glory and power? How to give God what already belongs to God? In another translation of the same verse, we’re told to ascribe to the Lord glory and strength. In other words, to credit God for God’s mighty works. And then to be moved not just to offer praise and thanks, but also to worship the Lord in his temple, and to proclaim to the nations, ‘God is king’.

Allowing faith to empower attribution, which then motivates praise and thanksgiving, worship and proclamation. And, of course, by proclamation, the faith is spread further, and the cycle begins again. What do we have here, my dear friends, if not a spiritual roadmap for mission? Could this be what Jesus is referring to in the gospel, when he tells his opponents to give back to God what belongs to God? But doesn’t everything already belong to God? Again, could it be that what we’re being asked to do is to count our blessings, to credit God for all the good we have received? If this is true, then the first step to becoming a more missionary church is simply to engage in the humble and honest act of attribution.

Sisters and brothers, if we truly believe that the loving and merciful hand of God lies behind all our successes, then what must we do to give God more credit today?

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Breaking News: Ordinary Time

Apart from those seasons having their own distinctive character, thirty-three or thirty-four weeks remain in the yearly cycle that do not celebrate a specific aspect of the mystery of Christ. Rather, especially on the Sundays, they are devoted to the mystery of Christ in all its aspects. This period is known as Ordinary Time. Ordinary Time begins on Monday after the Sunday following 6 January and continues until Tuesday before Ash Wednesday inclusive. It begins again on Monday after Pentecost and ends before Evening Prayer I of the First Sunday of Advent. This is also the reason for the series of liturgical texts found in both the Roman Missal and The Liturgy of the Hours (Vol. III - IV), for Sundays and weekdays in this season. ~ General Norms for the Liturgical Year & Calendar, 43-44

From 36th Jesuit General Congregation

It is our union with one another in Christ that testifies to the Good News more powerfully than our competences and abilities.... In our individualistic and competitive age, we should remember that the community plays a very special role since it is a privileged place of apostolic discernment.... The Jesuit community is a concrete space in which we live as friends in the Lord. This life together is always at the service of mission, but because these fraternal bonds proclaim the Gospel, it is itself a mission. –Companions in a Mission of Reconciliation and Justice (CMRJ), nn. 7-9.

With the poor, we can learn what hope and courage mean.... In our communities and apostolates, we hear the call to rediscover hospitality to strangers, to the young, to the poor, and to those who are persecuted. Christ himself teaches us this hospitality. –CMRJ, nn. 15-16.

At the heart of Ignatian spirituality is the transforming encounter with the mercy of God in Christ that moves us to a generous personal response. The experience of the merciful gaze of God on our weakness and sinfulness humbles us and fills us with gratitude, helping us to become compassionate ministers to all.... For us Jesuits, compassion is action, an action discerned together. Yet we know that there is no authentic familiarity with God if we do not allow ourselves to be moved to compassion and action by an encounter with the Christ who is revealed in the suffering, vulnerable faces of people, indeed in the suffering of creation. –CMRJ, nn. 19-20.

(T)he Society must respond more decisively to the Church’s call for a new evangelization, giving special emphasis to ministry to and with the young and with families.... A special gift Jesuits and the Ignatian family have to offer to the Church and her mission of evangelization is Ignatian spirituality, which facilitates the experience of God and can therefore greatly help the process of personal and communal conversion. –CMRJ, nn. 22-23.

In many societies, there is an increased level of conflict and polarization, which often gives rise to violence that is all the more appalling because it is motivated and justified by distorted religious convictions. In such situations, Jesuits, along with all who seek the common good, are called to contribute from their religious-spiritual traditions towards the building of peace, on local and global levels. –CMRJ, n. 28.

Pope Francis has emphasized the fundamental connection between the environmental crisis and the social crisis in which we live today. Poverty, social exclusion, and marginalization are linked with environmental degradation. These are not separate crises but one crisis that is a symptom of something much deeper: the flawed way societies and economies are organised. The current economic system with its predatory orientation discards natural resources as well as people. For this reason, Pope Francis insists that the only adequate solution must be a radical one. The direction of development must be altered if it is to be sustainable. We Jesuits are called to help heal a broken world, promoting a new way of producing and consuming, which puts God’s creation at the center.... The multifaceted challenge of caring for our common home calls for a multifaceted response from the Society. We begin by changing our personal and community lifestyles, adopting behaviour coherent with our desire for reconciliation with creation. – CMRJ, nn. 29-30

From 35th Jesuit General Congregation

From General Congregation 35

By sending us to 'those physical and spiritual places which others do not or have difficulty reaching,' the Pope entrusts to us the task to 'build bridges of understanding and dialogue,' according to the best tradition of the Society, in the diversity of its ministries.
- Decree With Renewed Fervor and Dynamism, n. 6

To be missioned to this work 'at the New Frontiers of our times' always requires that one also be rooted at the very heart of the Church. This tension, specific to the Ignatian charism, opens the way to true creative fidelity.
- Decree With Renewed Fervor and Dynamism, n. 13

In every mission that we carry out, we seek only to be where (Christ) sends us. The grace we receive as Jesuits is to be and to go with him, looking on the world with his eyes, loving it with his heart and entering into its depths with his unending compassion.
- Decree on Identity, n. 15

For ultimately, there is no reality that is only profane for those who know how to look. We must communicate this look and provide a pedagogy inspired by the Spiritual Exercises, that carries people - especially the young - into it.
- Decree on Identity, n. 10

Our ministries of proclamation of the Word and the celebration of the Life of Christ in the sacraments continue to be fundamental for our mission and our lives together as Jesuits.
- Decree on Mission, n. 19

The complexity of the problems we face and the richness of the opportunities offered demand that we engage in building bridges between rich and poor and establishing advocacy links of mutual support between those who hold political power and those who find it difficult to voice their interests. Our intellectual apostolate provides an inestimable help in setting up these bridges, offering us new ways of understanding in depth the mechanism and links among our present problems.
- Decree on Mission, n. 28

Jesuit community is not just for mission, it is itself mission.
- Decree on Mission, n. 41

In this global context it is important to highlight the extraordinary potential represented by our character as an international and multicultural body. Acting consistently with this character can not only enhance the apostolic effectiveness of our work but in a fragmented and divided world it can witness to the reconciliation in solidarity of all the children of God.
- Decree on Mission, n. 43

Faith in Jesus Christ teaches us that self-realization comes from self-giving and that freedom is not so much the power to choose as the power to order our choices toward love. At the same time, love for Jesus Christ and the desire to follow him call us to trusting commitment. Commitment to the Word Incarnate cannot be separated from commitment to the concrete manifestations of the Word that are at the center of our lives, the Church and the Society which exists to serve the Church.
- Decree on Obedience, n. 19

Sunday, October 22, 2023

The First Step To Mission

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